Saturday, April 20, 2013

Home was not home
Your room was home
A corner was home
The place they weren’t, that was home

We now know you

Jim Rice
When Jim Rice hit the Hall of Fame ballot after his 16-year career with the Red Sox, the debates got ugly. Rice was feared, argued his supporters; Rice was overrated, a beneficiary of Fenway Park, argued his detractors. During most of Rice’s career in Boston, Fenway was a terrific hitter’s park, the traditional Fenway of “no lead is safe” lore. Overall, Rice hit .320 with 208 home runs at Fenway but .277 with 174 home runs on the road. In his 1978 MVP season, Rice hit .361/.416/.690 with 28 home runs at home and .269/.325/.512 with 18 home runs on the road. The debates lasted until Rice’s 15th and final year on the ballot when he made it in.

Sandy Koufax
Through 1961, Koufax was 54-53 in his career with a 3.94 ERA, a talented but erratic left-hander. Suddenly, in 1962, he put it all together, and over his final five seasons in the majors went 111-34 with a 1.95 ERA, leading the NL in ERA all five seasons. Koufax’s control did improve dramatically, but something else happened in 1962: The Dodgers moved out of the L.A. Coliseum and into Dodger Stadium. In 1961, Koufax had a 2.77 ERA on the road … but 4.22 at home. In 1960, he had 3.00 ERA on the road … but 5.27 at home. In 1962, Koufax had a 3.53 ERA on the road … but 1.75 at home. In 1963, he was 2.31 on the road … and 1.38 at home. He had always been pretty good on the road, but the difference was he became unhittable at Dodger Stadium.

Nolan Ryan
Before finishing his legendary career with the Rangers, Ryan spent eight seasons with the Angels and nine with the Astros; that’s 17 years in parks that heavily favored pitchers. Check out his career home/road splits, including his days with the Mets and Rangers: 189-136, 2.77 ERA at home; 135-156, 3.73 ERA on the road. Yes, Ryan had a career road record 21 games under .500.

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Koufax is really not like the other two. It's true that, in 1962, Sandy got control of the strike zone, losing about 1/3 of his walks per season. And his ERA home/road splits went wild. But, if you check his won/lost splits, you find that he won just about as often on the road as at home in the 1960s. What happened was the the Dodgers' offense varied just as wildly home vs. road as Sandy's ERA did. The quote cites Nolan Ryan's won/lost splits, and they do make a case against Ryan. But Koufax, whose won/lost splits are not in the quote, really isn't the same thing. He was the same pitcher on the road as at home; the ballpark just made his ERAs look much better. He was getting the same results when the runs were tallied up. He deserves every bit of his reputation. - Brock Hanke

The obvious point not really made in TFA is that if a park exaggerates one guy's stats, it exaggerates those of his teammates and opponents in that park as well. So sure, Koufax was unhittable in Dodger Stadium, but so were Bob Veale (to pick almost at random: 2.25 in 17 starts) and lots of other visiting pitchers. So Koufax wasn't some sort of fluke, he was just better than the other guys, and it manifested itself as weirdly-extreme-looking stats. He was also pretty damn good on the road, but his stats don't look quite as weird there.

Most of the time it would work that way in HOF cases. Where it works against a candidate is if he was actually bad on the road, not when he was good at home. Was Jim Rice bad on the road? His Away sOPS+ for his peak (1977-79) were 146, 145, 126 (as opposed to crazy Home sOPS+ of 179, 200, 204). Obviously he too was damn good on the road in 1977 and '78, very good but not great in '79, and then we confront the same problem we do when eyeballing his whole career in general: there isn't anything really great about it except for that peak. I'm not sure he's in the HOF due to park illusions; I think he's in there because The Big Peak produced Teh Big Fear :)

With Koufax, the only real case against him is his short career, because no matter how you adjust his numbers, he still towers over a very good field of his contemporaries** during his 1962-66 peak: three Cy Youngs when there was just one of those being awarded for both leagues; five NL ERA titles; a 111-34 W-L record; three strikeout crowns and four times the leader in K/9; two 1sts and two 2nds in his K/BB ratio; three times most shutouts; two 1sts and one 2nd in complete games; two 1sts & one 3rd in innings pitched; two 1sts, one 2nd & one 3rd in ERA+; four 1sts and one 3rd in WPA; and so on. And this in spite of the fact that in 1962 he was sidelined and / or ineffective due to injury for the second half of the season.

**Marichal, Spahn, Gibson, Drysdale, Perry, and Bunning, just to name the Hall of Famers

That Rice comment looks way out of line. I don't really think the argument against Rice was his stats are propped up by his home park, but that his stats just aren't good enough, even with the propping up of the homepark.

I don't think I can recall anyone saying Rice only looks good because of his splits. (mind you I have seen people point out his splits, to show that he isn't even as good as his relatively poor numbers for the hall indicate, but that is to a lesser degree)

I didn't click through but Santo is one of the most extreme you'll find: 296/383/522 at home, 257/342/406 on the road. The road numbers are barely above average, maybe a 110 OPS+ if we took Wrigley out of it.

31-4 against the Mets and Astros. He had a 1.90 ERA against HOU and a 1.44 ERA against NYM

a fair data point

It is a fair point. Though, again, the Astros were playing .400 ball in those years and the Mets around .350; combined they were playing .115 ball against Koufax. Even in such an extreme context, he was outperforming everybody else by quite a bit.

That Rice comment looks way out of line. I don't really think the argument against Rice was his stats are propped up by his home park, but that his stats just aren't good enough, even with the propping up of the homepark.

I don't think I can recall anyone saying Rice only looks good because of his splits. (mind you I have seen people point out his splits, to show that he isn't even as good as his relatively poor numbers for the hall indicate, but that is to a lesser degree)

Yeah, splits are just one of many issues for Rice. He simply wasn't as good as some contemporaries who didn't make the hall, and had too short a career to make it on career value.

For Ryan, the W-L splits don't seem very relevant to me. The ERA split is legitimate, showing that his parks helped run prevention (though keep in mind that even with average parks, pitchers will tend to pitch better at home.) Ryan's opponents had the same advantages he had during his home games. For Ryan, his case doesn't come down to rate anyway. For his first 3 years as an Angel he had a very good 122 ERA+, but that would not come anywhere near to recent years by Kershaw/ Verlander/etc. His value was taking the ball every 4th day, usually the complete game, no matter if his pitch counts climbed into the mid 200 level. That and lasting for 27 seasons.